Emerging markets will account for 80 per cent of global growth in the next five years, says Matthew Lasov in the FT Adviser’s Investment Adviser. Matthew Lasov is director of global research services at Frontier Strategy Group. As managers seek to meet or exceed ambitious growth targets during the next year, the pace of merger and acquisition activity (M&A) in emerging markets is likely to return to and exceed levels last seen in 2007. Three drivers will push managers to execute quickly acquisition opportunities: (1) the likelihood of a double-dip recession in developed economies, (2) record-high cash reserves, and (3) scarcity of high-quality M&A targets in emerging markets.

Thus it will be interesting to see how technology companies solidify, merge, and/or are acquired by foreign or non-African MNCs.

The adoption of new forms of communication in Africa over the past decade – both mobile telephone and internet – has been nothing short of revolutionary. The continent is estimated to have produced over 316 million new mobile phone users since 2000, passing 500 million total subscriptions late in 2010, and its total internet user population is now estimated at almost 120 million. Previously, communicating over long distances was fraught with difficulty and expense; that outlook has been transformed. The significance of these trends for African economic development, transparency and democratization is profound; the opportunity for technology companies and indeed for businesses across many other sectors capable of leveraging such channels for advertising and delivery is no less significant.

While the West has always imagined Africa as a dark continent, we are slowly starting to see the sleeping giant arising from his slumber and mobile has become the way we are innovating and getting ahead of the curve. It is a story for another day but it will be nice to really figure out what was the special sauce in Kenya that made MPesa scale while Vodafone were unable to replicate it globally.

As you rightly say, “the basic foundation of any technology success is based on finding a problem, a need, and solving it. This is what we’re doing in Africa.” But, unfortunately, that’s not what many ICT4D initiatives originating from the West are doing.

If ICT4D (well, really all development) initiatives are really serious about doing work that supports and contributes to the socio-economic development of emerging economies, then they need to wrap their heads around these realities AND incorporate them into their approaches: now.